


The Song of Time

by TheUnicornFountain



Category: The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker
Genre: End Game, Gen, Wind Waker spoiler warning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-09
Updated: 2014-10-09
Packaged: 2018-02-20 12:59:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,798
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2429726
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheUnicornFountain/pseuds/TheUnicornFountain
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A quiet moment shared before the Hero's arrival.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Song of Time

**Author's Note:**

> A quick scene born of my fascination with _The Wind Waker._ Comments, questions, and constructive criticism are always welcome. Please enjoy, thank you.

# The Song of Time

The heavy door’s creak caught the girl’s attention. She turned to it and saw it close behind the wide-built man who called himself Ganondorf. They studied each other as the boom of the door echoed up and down the tall room. A second, far more distant boom sounded on the other side of the door. Ganondorf looked over his shoulder at the sound with a grim smile. He turned back to the girl and began to cross the room.

“I hope you will forgive the flooding,” Ganondorf said in his deep voice. The hems of his voluminous clothes darkened and dragged with the weight of the seawater that sat on the floor. “The boy has broken several of the seals on this tower. Some leakage is to be expected, Princess Zelda.”

“It’s _Tetra,_ ” the girl countered. The name’s two hard syllables ricocheted off the walls.

Ganondorf paused in his approach and smiled again. He swept his right arm across his body and made a slow bow in acquiescence. Tetra saw the Triforce of Power glint off the dark skin of his hand. 

When Ganondorf resumed his walk, Tetra backed up to regain some distance from him. Her hip knocked a chair--one of the few pieces of furniture in the immense room. The scrape of its legs signaled Ganondorf’s arrival to the room’s small table. His wide sleeve passed over the tabletop, and a spread of food and drink appeared in its wake. Tetra swallowed. She was hungrier than she would ever admit to her captor. She was also smart. She eyed the meal with a wary eye. 

Ganondorf read the look well. “It is not poisoned,” he assured her. “You are of no use if you are dead.”

Tetra frowned. “And once I’ve served your purpose?” she questioned.

It was difficult to read Ganondorf’s face for, aside from the occasional smile, it gave little away. Yet his words had the ring of truth to them when he replied, “By then, it will not matter to me if you live or die. The same will hold true for the boy,” he added when another distant boom climbed the stairs beyond the door. “I will have what I desire, and no one will have the strength to take it away from me again.”

In the wake of the second boom, dust sifted down from the room’s high ceiling, which was cloaked in darkness. A morth raced the dust down and bounced off of the table just as Tetra reached for a plate. She screamed in surprise and staggered away from the monster. It rolled off of the table and headed for her in jerking movements. A muted rattle accompanied each motion. 

Ganondorf chuckled. “They have infested the rafters over the years, but they are harmless. Come here, little one.” He moved with surprising quickness to step into the shrinking space between Tetra and the morth. His hand swept up the monster, and it climbed his sleeve to disappear into the folds of his clothing. Tetra never saw it again.

Ganondorf stood some distance away while Tetra returned to the table and filled a plate with food. Whenever she glanced at him, she found him looking up towards the unseen ceiling. Was he on the watch for more morths? Or was there some secret thought behind that inscrutable expression? Tetra took a seat at the table and continued wondering between bites and sips. The food wasn’t great, but it was by no means bad either. The drink stood out far more with its sweet, heavy taste and golden hue. Tetra recognized a hint of purified forest water. No wonder the drink tasted divine. “What is this?” she asked.

Ganondorf dropped his chin and turned to look at the glass that Tetra held up. “It is called Windfall, named after its golden color and the island from where it hails.” He turned away and strode across the room to where a few more pieces of furniture lay under dusty sheets. 

“And this place?” Tetra called over the sloshing footsteps. “Why is it built so high?”

Ganondorf paused and looked back at her. “It is my tower,” he replied. “I prefer them tall.” Tetra frowned and huffed, and Ganondorf smiled. “It once served a different purpose. It was built to harness the power of the wind gods. When it worked, the winds would sweep down and fill this entire chamber with the roar of the heavens.” He closed the remaining distance to the cloaked furniture. “When it worked.”

The melancholy in the words wasn't hard to miss. “It doesn’t work anymore?” Tetra guessed. 

Ganondorf pulled a sheet off of a piano. A bench was revealed next. The sheets billowed out behind him to sink to the flooded floor, where the seawater saturated them. “The king of Hyrule ordered the tower sealed. He claimed no man should have the power of the gods to himself. _Hypocrite._ ” Ganondorf’s voice betrayed underlying bitterness. “To say such a thing when his family held the secrets to the Triforce… It marked the beginning of everything.”

The bench creaked under Ganondorf’s weight when he took a seat at the piano. His wide hands began to run through various scales. After so many years, the piano was out of tune. Ganondorf tilted the instrument up onto its back legs and dropped it. It emitted a harsh jangle, and Tetra jumped in her seat. When Ganondorf resumed his practice, each note rang out true. The tall room caught and amplified each keystroke to fill the tower with sound.

Tetra ate and drank to the sound of scales. When the notes turned to a familiar song, she stopped with her fork halfway to her mouth. It clattered to her plate a moment later when she left her seat to cross the room. She positioned herself to the piano’s right and fixed a hard look on Ganondorf’s downturned face. “Where did you learn this song?” she asked. Ganondorf ignored the question, and Tetra slammed her gloved hand down onto the high keys. “Answer me!”

Ganondorf’s hands stilled, and Tetra’s interruption echoed around the room. When he lifted his head, the inscrutable expression returned as he fell to staring at some unseen point beyond the piano. He blinked after a long while, and his eyes dropped to the keys once more. “Do you know it?” he asked Tetra. His amused tone suggested he knew the answer to the question.

“My mother…” Tetra was glad for the heavy makeup on her face, for it hid most of the blush that came to her cheeks. “My mother’s ship was my home. When we made landfall, I always had trouble sleeping in the strange inns. My mother would play or hum that song until I fell asleep. It’s her song, so how do you know it?”

“It is _your_ song,” Ganondorf corrected. His fingers plucked out a few notes. “Zelda’s Lullaby.” He played a few bars of the song while Tetra’s thoughts reeled. “I met your mother once. And you as well.”

Tetra shook her head to clear it. “When?” she pressed. 

“You would not remember,” Ganondorf said. “Your mother was playing the piano in the inn on Greatfish Isle when I happened to be passing through. You were with her, asleep on the bench with your head in her lap. You were such a small thing. We passed words when I mentioned that I dabbled with the piano, and she taught me this song.”

Tetra folded her arms atop the piano and rested her chin upon them. Her eyes no longer flashed with anger. “My mother died three years ago,” she murmured. “She grew obsessed with some treasure that was said to be scattered around the sea. She would tell me that she had to find it before the wrong people did, or it would mean the end of everything. She had all these maps, but she couldn’t decipher them. I thought she was mad, and I begged her to stop.” A tear leaked out of Tetra’s eye. “She overworked herself to death.” Her voice hardened. “I ordered my crew to hide all of the maps around the sea. I didn’t want to look at them anymore, and I didn’t want anyone else to fall into the same deadly obsession.”

“I met your mother four years ago,” Ganondorf revealed. Tetra’s head jerked up, and her wet eyes widened. “I wonder if she understood what I meant to the two of you--the surviving members of the Hyrulean royal line. Perhaps she did, and she tried to stop me before I had a chance to start.” Ganondorf’s brow furrowed. “If I had only known what lay asleep feet from me… If I had taken measures then…”

Another boom echoed from deep within Ganondorf’s stronghold. 

“Would you have?” Tetra questioned. The words came out terse. Her fingers were tight around her elbows, and there was a shake in her body.

Ganondorf spared her a sidelong glance. “Always it is the same song,” he remarked, and Tetra frowned. “Our fates,” Ganondorf elaborated. “Throughout time we come together again and again in discordant harmony. Always it is the same song.” He resumed playing the lullaby. “Merely of different variations.”

The notes sounded heavier to Tetra. It was almost as if they sat on her head and shoulders with the weight of cannonballs. She dropped her chin back to her arms and watched Ganondorf through eyes that slowly closed. Her body relaxed, and her limp hand dropped to the higher keys with a tinkling sound.

Ganondorf finished the lullaby. When the last notes ceased echoing, he sat for a while and stared into the distance once more. After some minutes of reflection had passed, he stood up, moved Tetra’s hand out of the way, and lowered the piano’s fallboard. Tetra didn’t stir when Ganondorf picked her up, or when he tucked her into the bed which sat in the middle of the room. 

A fourth distant boom sent the bed’s canopy swaying as if in a light wind. Ganondorf marked the movement with a weary look as he pulled the blankets up to Tetra’s chin. With the girl made comfortable, he took a seat on the edge of the bed and looked up the tower. His eyes tracked the dragons painted on the wall while he listened to his plans coming apart in the hands of a child. The Hero. He was here now. 

Ganondorf turned in his seat and looked through the thin canopy at the boy. The shining blade. The green tunic. The determined expression in the blue eyes. It was all the same, simply placed against a different setting. Ganondorf dropped his eyes to the slumbering girl beside him. 

“Do you sleep still?”


End file.
